March 25, 2017 Germanna Community College

          No Ice on the bike this morning but the 39 degrees that greeted me this morning quickly got into my bones.  Probably because after deciding to head north to Washington DC, I looked at the radar and saw I would be riding into rainclouds, again…  I reached rain sprinkles at the southern end tip of Fredericksburg.  Instead of getting wet I pulled off the freeway, had a coffee in the historic downtown and redirected myself to the Germanna Community College Campus to give the clouds time to pass.             Germanna Community College has three locations with the Fredericksburg campus being about 10 miles out of town, past the civil war battlefields.   It is a small campus consisting of only three large modern buildings that house all the classes and support.  When your mission is clearly defined, as it is in this state for Community Colleges than it appears to be easy to focus on what support is needed.  Germanna has lots of tutoring and career guidance support for its students at this site.  The facilities are very nice with lots of glass walls and up to date AV support.   The multiple partnership plaques with various local businesses clearly indicated that these facilities were not due to state support alone.

            One building housed the library and science and technology labs.  The labs were very modern and up to date but the Anatomy and Physiology classes were moved to a larger more traditional classroom laboratory spaces in the main building.  I learned this by following the signs for the Friday open lab tutoring.  I spoke with a very nice tutor who gave me a tour of the labs, while the instructor conducted a review session next door.  The reason the labs were here was a result of the same discussions of lab configurations as we have had at CCSF.  It may look nice to have sleek black fixed laboratory benches with sinks and gas, but what Anatomy labs need is lots of space to store models and reconfigurable spaces with movable tables because things get rearranged depending on what’s being studies (especially when you need to set up for a lab practical).

          One endearing aesthetic of the labs at Germanna, was the presence of the old Denoyer-Geppert wall posters.  CCSF has a treasure trove of these old pull down instructional teaching aides as well.  They don’t make them any more to my knowledge and I have seen them priced at over $150 a piece in interior design shops.  Quite a contrast to have modern buildings with classic teaching aids, of course at CCSF we have classic teaching aids in the classic Science Hall so at least we are consistent in our aesthetic.  On this day I was grateful that the college I was visiting had in its modern buildings…. modern heating systems…